The Art of Headdesking

The art of headdesking is a deep and complex thing; it is an activity practiced by all people in an art course, though those of other professions will likely adopt headdesking at one point or another during their lives.  In my case, I am an experienced headdesker, and have been doing it since I was about eleven.  Through recent years, I have honed my practice and now consider myself something of an expert; I headdesk in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings; I headdesk at home or at college, or anywhere in between where a suitable surface is available; I headdesk during the weekdays and the weekends, and during holidays.  Headdesking is a huge part of my life.

My most recent headdesking muse is as follows:  What the fudge am I going to do as my project this year?!

Honestly, I've been completely lost as to what to do without a brief.  That's not to say that I can't just make my own idea without prompting, it's that I know there are going to be requirements, and not knowing what they specifically are or how to meet them via brief has had me frustrated to no end.  I'm almost down to my final day to prepare for my tutorial/interview thing I have on Friday in which I have to explain my idea, and I still haven't decided.

All I know is that I have to do something social/political in some way; beyond that, there's been very little information I've been able to get a hold of.  My previous tutor suggested looking simply at how animation is always being outsourced from the UK and that we could do ours about simply bringing animation back to the UK; my only concern is that too many people doing that could be troublesome.

So the issue has been that I need to think of something to do that I have enough enthusiasm about that I'm not going to be wishing for the sweet release of death a month in, but that I don't feel too strongly on, because then I might end up having my rageface on all year while I endlessly think about how the subject of my choosing annoys me.  At the same time, I really want to continue to develop my narrative style while having the freedom to mess with the visual style of my animation.

I wanted to look at fashion, but I really don't want to be preachy about it (I have some strong views on the silliness of fashion).  So then maybe gender roles?  That's been designated 'backup plan'.  The Olympics would give some nice animation opportunities, but I doubt I could stick to it.  My current idea is maybe just looking at 3D animation's effect on the industry at large, as that would both let me have complete narrative freedom with my animation, plus it would let me experiment with 3D without having the whole thing be in 3D, and its a subject that interests me without frustrating me.  But then I worry 3D is very done-and-done...

Am I thinking into this too much?

Sigh.  With all this whinging, I need something to cheer me up.

Aha, just the thing!

I'm back :D

Hello, I'm back from my break that I never mentioned I was having before having and then returning from it. A lot's happened, but I've got a good track record for keeping important events to myself, so why change now?  Instead, I have pictures!

Firstly, it was Emma's birthday a short while ago.  This is 4 days late, but better late than never.

Happy Birthday, Emma!  Hope you had a good one!

Secondly, I actually have a pony.  Yes.  A My Little Pony pony.  This is a first attempt at mimicking the style of the new My Little Pony telly programme for a fan project a friend of mine is doing; he's asked me to provide character and enemy art, so this was my practice run for that.

It's a character who I think is called Applebloom, looking a bit older than she really should be.

And lastly, something that I've been working on for a friend of one of his characters.  The first image is a character reference sheet I worked on a while ago, which I'm in the process of remaking.  The bottom image is essentially version 2 of the character (as of yet not greenlighted, but I dunno if it will be given that it is quite different from the original).  I decided that the sort of deviantART fad with dragon anatomy is very boring and limiting, so on the remake I stopped trying to follow it.  Just draw a dragon how I think a dragon should look.

V1

V2

I leave you with this.